The Planes Out Of Boston \ The Rainbow Completes Itself

Nancy:  Transatlantic flights follow the coastline until reaching the Maine border, then head out over the Atlantic.

The Planes Out Of Boston

I never said it was a wilderness,

just a bay so empty that I could sit

naked where the rocks shelved down

to the water, where I made so little difference

to the marsh hawk that she swept down

the shoreline, across, back, again, again.

It wasn’t wilderness, it was forest

and bobcat and bear and the wildness

of abandonment.

Until the sun set.

After the sun set, Orion ruled.  Orion,

the Swan, Sirius, the Great Bear.  And

that was wilderness.  I could stand

in an opening between black trees and be

in the wilderness of Arcturus.

Now, after the sun sets, I’m in the suburbs

of Boston, or New York, or Chicago.  Here,

where the land shelves off into the North Atlantic,

the planes head east past the pole star,

blinking red toward breakfast in London.

I know, I never said it was a wilderness.

But now I realize it’s just a small, dark woodland;

I am very very far from Arcturus.

Alan: We all know there’s no pot of gold at the end.  Rather, I think, each rainbow seeks its destiny underground.

The Rainbow Completes Itself

in the roots

in the stones

in the graves

the rainbow completes itself

in the ground

the rainbow completes itself

in what we call earth

that is no more earth

than what we call sky

is sky –

in the deep waters

in fissures of granite

in the basalt

in the magma

in the molten core

and in the core of iron

the rainbow completes itself –

though it begins in air

as we do

the rainbow completes itself

in the ground

as we do